The Indie RPG Awards

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we've driven them off, and we have this - a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. But we don't know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

The game is played using a deck of cards - each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events - bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

In the shadow of empires, an epic saga of ambition and desire!

In an arid badlands, the hill people hunger. Your neighbors have grain, cattle, gold. You have horses and spears, courage and ambition. Together with those you love and hate, you will remake history... or die.

With the Hillfolk roleplaying game, you and your group weave an epic, ongoing saga of high-stakes interpersonal conflict that grows richer with every session. Its DramaSystem rules engine, from acclaimed designer Robin D. Laws, takes the basic structure of interpersonal conflict underlying fiction, movies and television and brings it to the world of roleplaying. This simple framework brings your creativity to the fore and keep a surprising, emotionally compelling narrative constantly on the move.

As you build your story, you mold and shape the Hillfolk setting to fit its needs. Do you entangle yourself with the seductions of your wealthy cousins to the north? Do you do battle with the fearsome sea people to the west? Or do you conquer the scattered badlands tribes to forge a new empire of your own?

Detailed play style notes show you how to make the most of DramaSystem's new tools. Once you've mastered DramaSystem's nuances, you'll hunger to take them to new vistas. A stunning talent roster brings you 30 additional series settings. From Cthulhu cult family drama to ninjas, pirates, and steampunk cowboys, Hillfolk offers years of play value.

Contributors from every corner of the gaming scene and beyond include Ed Greenwood, Gene Ha & Art Lyon, Jason Morningstar, Kenneth Hite, Rob Heinsoo, Meg Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Jesse Bullington, John Scott Tynes, and Keith Baker.

Will you succumb to temptation?

In a dystopian era of vampires, magic, and steampunk super-science, you face overwhelming oppression. Will you oppose your Antagonist? Will you fight for your Goal, and in so doing, bring meaningful change to your world? Or will you be tempted by the distractions of this world.

A roleplaying game for 3-6 players, 3+ hours, one or multiple sessions.
Intuitive, streamlined ruleset.
Overcome Antagonists using an action-based resolution system.
Compelling, dystopian, steampunk setting with room for personalization and change.

A roleplaying game about the Icelandic sagas. 180 pages, with full colour illustrations.

"In the year 874, the first Norse settlers set foot on Iceland. They were escaping war, poverty and the dissolution of their political freedoms on the mainland. Their families and people followed and claimed the empty lands, free from rulers and religious pressures, and became lone farmers, determined to survive in this harsh new environment. These are their stories.

Play as an Icelandic settler between the end of the 9th and 10th centuries, also known as the times of the Icelandic Sagas, and and weigh between upholding your honour, your freedom, or the lives of you and your family. Tell the stories of their families, their lives, trials and legacies, and discover or change history as you forge a veritable Saga worth to echo through time."

Based on the award-winning Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game, Torchbearer is a riff on the early model of fantasy roleplaying games. In it, you take on the role of a fortune-seeking adventurer. To earn that fortune, you must delve into forlorn ruins, brave terrible monsters and retrieve forgotten treasures. However, make no mistake, this game is not about being a hero or about fighting for what you believe. This game is about exploration and survival. You may become a hero. You might have to fight for your ideals. But to do either of those things, you must prove yourself in the wilds. Because there are no jobs, no inheritance, no other opportunities for your deadbeat adventurers. This life is your only hope to prosper in this world.

The Sundered Land is a series of 5 single-page games plus 2 supplements set in the Sword & Sorcery ruins of the future.

A Doomed Pilgrim is designed for online play. You play the pilgrim, and your friends on the internet try to see you to your doom.

The other four games are designed for face to face play:
In Caravan Guards, you're guarding a caravan on the Burnt Road, and the Hazard player creates monsters and other dangers to try to destroy it.
In Night Watch, you're passing the night by telling your comrades stories from your past.
In At Ends, you're down to your ambition and your wits, trying to make your way on the streets of a city of intrigue.
In Warriors, you're meeting your enemies in battle.

There are two supplements:

Restless Ambition adapts Caravan Guards to three different circumstances: a necromancer trying to summon, enslave, or defeat a powerful ghost; a lover trying to keep a forbidden tryst; and one wronged seeking redress or revenge.
Roleplaying in the Ruins of the Future recommends stringing the games together, cultivating the skills of play, and creating new Sundered Land games of your own. It also includes a ludography and thanks.

The games are mutually compatible and overlapping, but self-contained. Each game plays in 20-60 minutes. You can play them in whatever order you like. You can bring the character from one game into the next, or create a new character whenever you like. Each of the games has a GM, but you should take turns from game to game to game.

EPOCH is a roleplaying game of character-driven survival horror. The goal is to deliver a tense and scary experience in a single game session.

EPOCH identifies the main challenges to running a genuinely tense and suspenseful horror game and sets out strategies and techniques to overcome them. This is supported by a simple, card-based system:

In EPOCH players generate their own characters at the table, using a range of randomly dealt elements which establish relationships, traits and strengths and weaknesses. They gradually turn a character outline into a sketch, and a sketch into a portrait during play through a structured opening scene, flashbacks, secrets and complications.

An EPOCH scenario is divided into a number of Tension Phases. At the end of each Tension Phase there is a potentially deadly or sanity-shattering challenge -either mental or physical- which is survived by playing an outcome card during the Challenge Round and narrating the effect on their character. If a player has no cards remaining, their character is eliminated.

Each Challenge Round there is a secret vote for the most ‘interesting’ character with the winner recovering an outcome card, enhancing their chances of survival.

Surviving characters have a chance at securing a happy ending by scoring points on the horror track, which is laid out face down by the GM at the beginning of the game.

Combining the best of classic games and modern innovation, Blade & Crown includes:

• A unified mechanic using a few ten-sided dice and a single twelve-sided die for almost all rolls
• Options and encouragement for every player to take narrative control, including Traits that motivate, guide and focus immersive roleplaying
• Combat that walks the line between realism and heroism: gritty enough to make combat dangerous, but survivable enough to make adventuring fun, and with tactical options to make combat as abstract or concrete as you want
• Magic that is mysterious and mystical
• Religion that is flavorful and compelling
• Complete rules for designing characters, doing tasks, buying & selling, researching and employing magic, practicing religion, conducting combat, traveling and more - everything is contained in this volume
• Extensive GM notes
• A sample campaign seed, "The Gift Map", and deck plans for the cog The Jade Swan, and dozens of adventure seeds
• Character sheets and reference forms

Blade & Crown is ready for adventure! Are you?

“Thug life aint always what it's cracked up to be; especially when you got a big-ass dragon living in your hood.” In DnDizzle you take on the role of a heroic OG battling against the menacing black dragon that has taken over the city dump and is summoning monsters to destroy the OGs and their hood.

DnDizzle comes in a sleek, 4"x6" pocket sized format for the nerd OG on the go. All you need is 2d6 (your bones), the book, a pencil, and some paper. From there you are good to go. This game is for mature players for language, drug use and violence. If you don't mind some fantasy adult content and would like a good laugh, come join the fight and become a legend of the hood.

Lots of times, we want to play a roleplaying game but just don't have the time for all the prep work involved. We wanted to try creating a simple fantasy roleplaying game that gives a group of players all the tools they need to play an exciting fantasy adventure in a single evening, no homework, no fuss.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures gives you a kit to make a gang of childhood friends and send them off on their first big adventure, just like in the novels we loved growing up.

We're trying to seed your imagination without cramping your style, so we've built a familiar-feeling OSR game that many players will remember without having to read the rules.

Anyone with a background in OSR games will already be comfortable with the core rules of Beyond the Wall.

• Inspired by the works of Ursula K. LeGuin and Lloyd Alexander.
• Character Playbooks and Scenario Packs for play in a single evening with no prep.
• Guidelines for making your own custom classes, as well as demons, dragons, and goblins.
• Full magic system with cantrips, spells, and rituals.
• Player driven village design for fleshing out the characters' home.
• This set contains four rules documents, six Character Playbooks, and the Hidden Cult Scenario Pack.

Kingdoms are all around us. They are the communities that unite us. Your Kingdom can be any group or organization that interests you. You could play a Wild West frontier town, a colony ship crawling to a distant star, or a sprawling Empire holding conquered peoples beneath its thumb.

As you play, you'll confront your Kingdom and your characters with Crossroads, critical decisions that may change your community forever. What will your Kingdom do? What will it become? Strive to make your Kingdom live up to your ideals... or watch as it burns.

The Kingdom is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you?

In the darkness of ages past, our universe was visited by aliens strange and unknowable. They enslaved hundreds of people and they conquered thousands of worlds. For untold generations, the Myriad people served them, and worlds were stripped of all resources, and left barren and dead. And then, a century ago, the Syndics were gone. A complete game in one volume, MYRIAD SONG is a science-fiction adventure where you will travel in the strange legacy of an alien empire. Discover primitive worlds with savage monsters . . . high-tech stations of amazing technology . . . derelict planets where people scrounge out a living among the ruins . . . and places far stranger. You will find lost treasures . . . and you will find horrors best forgotten. The risks are great, but the rewards are greater.

A nano-game of interstellar crime and rebellion by Epidiah Ravachol.

Four game books in one, a not a single book over 470 words long!

This tiny package packs an entire cosmos of punches:

• Character creation rules;
• Rogue vessel creation rules;
• Alien species, culture and environment creation rules;
• Rules for handling long military campaigns as well as drawn-out courtships;
• Rules for creating and violating alien taboos;
• A full-color map of the entire galaxy;
• Rules for interstellar travel and pursuit;
• A complete account of the Seven Wonders of the Galaxy;
• Rules for creating new and alien technology;
• Calibration mechanics to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to the wacky, weird and powerful;
• Guidelines for customizing technologies to the cultures that created them;
• Customization rules for the player character’s personal gear;
• And rules for building, repairing, inventing, constructing, jury rigging, and demolition on a deadline or at the sort of leisurely pace only interstellar travel can allow!

All of that, and the core game, in less than 2,000 words! You can see for yourself--the whole game is in the preview.